Concrete is a substance which is an amalgam of various materials, usually water, sand, gravel, cement, fiberglass, chemicals and other additives depending upon the concrete processing plant's abilities and the end user's desires. Concrete is commonly transported to a construction site in concrete mixture delivery vehicles, typically large trucks. The concrete within the delivery vehicles is typically prepared and retained within a large rotatable mixing drum. During transportation within the mixing drum, the concrete is in a wet, relatively fluid state. At the construction site, the wet concrete mixture is typically gravitated from the delivery vehicle via one or more pour chutes.
After substantially all of the concrete mixture is unloaded from the delivery vehicle, a considerable amount of wet concrete mixture continues to adhere to the pour chutes. In the past, this remaining wet concrete mixture was merely hosed off onto the ground. Today, however, the rinse water used to clean the pour chutes is considered a potential groundwater contaminant. Consequently, environmental laws generally prohibit the disbursal of such rinse waters onto the ground. All such rinse waters must be recouped and recycled without being allowed to flow into streets, storm drains or gutters or allowed to percolate into the soil.
One way of dealing with concrete mixture rinse waters at large construction sites is to deposit such rinse waters in a prefabricated lined evaporation pit. The construction of a prefabricated evaporation pit at smaller commercial and residential construction sites is not practical, however.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,741,065, 6,155,277 and 6,354,439 disclose a variety of equipment for allowing the removal of concrete chute rinse water in the delivery vehicle. However, each such proposed equipment requires the use of expensive and bulky hydraulic, pneumatic or electrical components which must be carried on the delivery vehicle. Such hydraulic or electrical components are expensive to purchase and maintain and awkward to carry on the delivery vehicle. Also, such hydraulic, pneumatic or electrical components leave the driver of the delivery vehicle vulnerable to hydraulic, pneumatic and electrical system failures which would prevent use of the equipment at the construction site. Still further, proposed equipment in the prior art frequently suffer from leakage of contaminated water during the disconnecting of hoses from collection vessels. Finally, several of the proposed equipment requires the use of the vehicle's mixing drum to store the recovered rinse water. Storing such rinse water in the mixing drum can adversely affect the integrity of the next load of concrete mixture prepared and transported within the mixing drum, unless the rinse water is thoroughly drained from the mixing drum prior to the preparation of the next batch of concrete mixture. From a practical standpoint, this is a major disadvantage of such proposed equipment because there is a strong temptation among individual concrete mixture preparation personnel to reuse the rinse water (already in the mixing drum) rather than to take the time to thoroughly drain and reconstitute the rinse water and to replace it in the mixing drum with fresh water.
Accordingly, there is a need for a concrete reclamation apparatus which avoids the aforementioned problems in the prior art in an efficient and inexpensive manner.